Podcaster Joe Rogan claimed on Wednesday that he was previously targeted by American presidents for spreading COVID-19 misinformation, although he declined to name names.

“Thank God I was on Spotify and thank God Spotify is not an American company,” Rogan said on Wednesday. “And also it helped that I was number one in, like, 90 countries and not number 90 in one country, you know? That helped. That helped a lot.”

He also said that presidents and former presidents were involved and contacted his employer, Spotify, a Swedish streaming service.

“I can’t even talk about it but there was presidents involved and former presidents involved that were contacting Spotify,” Rogan said. “Oh yeah. Trying to get me removed for vaccine misinformation. Yeah. And it turned out to be right. All of it. Not a single [person] apologized.”

Contrary to Rogan’s claim, the COVID-19 vaccines that he regularly denounced as unsafe have proved to be as effective and advisable to use as other conventional vaccines. Meanwhile his claims that COVID-19 can be treated through alternative methods like taking ivermectin have been thoroughly debunked.

“It was nuts, but it didn’t work,” Rogan said. “But they tried. They spent a lot of money, a loooot of money.”

Rogan is a right-wing streamer who has made the news repeatedly during the 2020s for using his platform to promote President Donald Trump, Trump’s supporters and reactionary billionaires like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. He also makes scientifically inaccurate claims such as saying that man-made climate change is not a threat to the planet and that the pseudoarcheology promulgated by Graham Hancock is real. Additionally, he has repeatedly used his platform to advance racist ideas, such as saying Black brains are fundamentally different from white brains and that white nationalist politics should be normalized.

More recently, Rogan laughed supportively when former football player Josh Hokit won a heavyweight bout over fighter Derrick Lewis at Trump’s recent birthday bash.

"Shout-out to Trump for having the balls to put some s—— like this on," Hokit initially said, then continuing his monologue by claiming that “lastly, Michelle Obama is a man! Am I right, America?"

That was not the first time Rogan laughed along supportively when Hokit made racist comments about a Black woman. In January he did so after Hokit won a separate UFC match and proclaimed “P.S. Brittney Griner is a man!” Rogan laughed so hard that he struggled to hold on to his microphone.

“Brittney Griner catching strays,” Rogan later chuckled, which he then qualified by saying “she doesn’t deserve that.”

Rogan has also tended to laugh off other comments that others find offensive, such as him lightheartedly dismissing Trump comparing himself to Jesus Christ as the product of him using too much AI.

A large number of President Donald Trump’s supporters began wearing masks in mid-2020 after their leader urged them to do so — and now, a scientific paper explains the psychology behind why they did so, per PsyPost.

“Political leaders play a potentially important role shaping behaviors and beliefs during crises. In the pandemic, a number of high-status politicians, notably leaders of populist parties, were seen to diminish compliance with institutional recommendations by casting doubt on COVID guidelines,” proclaimed the abstract of a recent study by Bartholomew A. Konechni, a sociologist at Sciences Po Paris, published in the journal American Sociological Review. “But what happens when such leaders change position and endorse previously discouraged behaviors?”

Konechni analyzed data of more than 5,000 patients from the Understanding Coronavirus in America panel to study how millions of Trump’s supporters switched from refusing to wear masks during the COVID-19 pandemic to embracing them, entirely because of Trump saying on July 1, 2020, that he started wearing them because he thought doing so made him look like the Lone Ranger. He learned that when Trump made his announcement that he would wear masks, it closed the gap between Republican and Democratic compliance by roughly 40 percent, particularly among individuals who were more exposed to the early-summer spikes in COVID-19. Yet this did not mean that they necessarily abandoned their original anti-mask views.

“In contrast to expectations from most dominant theoretical models of behavioral change, especially the health belief model, no corresponding shift in beliefs about facemasks can be detected,” Konechni wrote. “These results have important theoretical implications for understanding how pivots can shape behaviors during crises, the validity of existing models in public health, pandemic populism’s causes, and directions of future research.”

PsyPost’s Karina Petrova elaborated on what exactly happened.

“Such a disconnect might seem unusual, but sociologists have documented similar patterns in everyday life,” Petrova wrote. “College students often drink heavily in public to fit in with peers, even if they privately disapprove of binge drinking. Parents sometimes refuse childhood vaccinations based on suspicion, but they will accept a vaccine for themselves under intense workplace pressure. Social expectations frequently push people into actions they do not intellectually endorse.”

Konechni found that Trump’s “Lone Ranger” comment worked because many of Trump’s supporters were “living in states where the outbreak was spiking the hardest. This suggests that the severity of the crisis acted as a catalyst. When people are navigating immediate danger, they may look to their preferred leaders for survival cues. They might follow those cues for group solidarity or out of plain anxiety, bypassing the need to logically validate the underlying science.”

Petrova added, “There are limitations to this analysis that warrant attention. The study used self-reported data. Survey participants might have altered their answers simply to project loyalty to their political camp instead of accurately reporting their habits. The focus on a single political figure during a rare global disaster also restricts how broadly these lessons can be applied.”

Yet the science journalist continued, “Face masks were highly visible and novel, which might separate them from more private medical choices like taking a pill. Trump also commands a decidedly unique relationship with his base. The results from this specific historical moment may not translate seamlessly to a standard politician asking their constituents to eat less sugar or exercise more frequently. Future studies might explore how strong social networks shape these reactions, or how long such unanchored behaviors can be realistically maintained.”

Speaking with this journalist for Salon in 2021, Dr. Nicholas Epley, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago, said that “when we’re engaging [in] motivated reasoning, we tend to hold evidence to a lower threshold of quality before we believe it’s true. A person trying to justify a belief they have might ask themselves ‘can I’ believe this to be true, while a person trying to refute a belief they’d rather not have holds evidence to a higher standard, asking themselves ‘must I’ believe this to be true. Both are motivated approaches to evaluating evidence. The first can lead us to accept weak evidence in support of a belief, while the latter can lead us to be overly skeptical of good evidence.”

Reports of three deaths from hantavirus on a cruise ship in the Atlantic Ocean are igniting fears of another pandemic. Health experts, however, are cautioning against panic, as hantavirus, a disease spread by rodents, is much different from COVID-19 — which, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) killed more than 7 million people worldwide (including 1 million in the United States alone). COVID-19, according to health experts, is spread much more quicky and easily.

Salon's Troy Farah, however, is arguing that the hantavirus deaths are a major wake-up call for President Donald Trump and his administration — and they're dropping the ball.

"The fact that the outbreak was on a cruise ship, one of the first places COVID-19 started to spread back in early 2020, is giving tons of people déjà vu," Farah explains in an article. "But besides both being viruses, the similarities between SARS-CoV-2 and hantavirus actually aren't close. They infect in different ways and are classed in entirely different phylums, meaning they are not remotely related. Furthermore, hantavirus has been around for decades, it is not spread quickly or easily between people — and those who catch it display symptoms, unlike COVID, which can spread between folks unknowingly. The WHO and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention both report that the current risk to the global population from this event is low."

Farah emphasizes, however, that the United States "will almost certainly experience another pandemic from some highly infectious pathogen in the next 10 years or less" —and MAGA Republicans are dropping the ball by not thinking about preparedness. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, for example, tweeted, "Don’t comply. This time, just don't," while others are falsely claiming that ivermectin can be used to treat hantavirus.

"While hantavirus isn't a huge concern to me right now — and many public health experts seem to agree — I am worried about what comes down the line," Farah warns. " I wouldn't be surprised if people didn't take basic precautions during the next pandemic. No flattening the curve, no masking in crowds, just letting some brutal disease rip through us, as if arrogance and resentment can stop infectious disease — a strategy somehow even less effective than ivermectin!"

Since returning to the White House on January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump has been heavily focused on giving the Washington, DC area an extensive makeover — from the Kennedy Center to a proposed White House ballroom to a proposed "triumphal arch" near Arlington National Cemetery in Virigina. And according to a GOP insider, Trump's DC makeover obsession started when he was on his way to a federal courthouse to face criminal election interference charges.

Trump was up against four criminal indictments during the 2024 election: two federal, one in Georgia, and one in New York State. Jack Smith, then a special counsel for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), prosecuted Trump for keeping classified documents at Mar-a-Lago in one case and for election interference in another. And according to a former campaign official interviewed by Semafor, Trump was on his way to the federal E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in DC in August 2023 when he started thinking about an extensive makeover for the U.S. capital.

The Daily Beast's Leigh Kimmins, drawing on Semafor's reporting, notes, "There, he hatched his plan to redesign the city in his own image, (the official) said. Just over a year later, he won the 2024 election and, upon taking office in January 2025, set about making his changes. The official, who was on the campaign trail with Trump, described how the vehicle had to swerve in the middle of the road to avoid debris, and how homeless encampments lined the streets. This rankled Trump, who made his fortune in real estate, (the official) said."

Trump's desire to give DC a "gaudy facelift," according to Kimmins, started when, on his way to the Prettyman Courthouse, he felt the city had fallen into disrepair.

Semafor's Shelby Talcott reports, "Facing arraignment on four charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, he looked out the window and saw a U.S. capital that had been slow to recover from COVID-19 and was bucking a national decline in crime. The ex-president saw shattered tiles in the roadway and homeless people sleeping on street corners in a city whose police department had recommended drivers stay in the middle lane to avoid carjackers. At one point, the vehicle swerved to avoid bricks and concrete dumped in the middle of the road. It was on that ride, an official with him on the campaign trail to reclaim the White House now believes, that the real estate developer-turned-president developed a new fixation with what he regarded as a second-tier swamp town that had slouched into its status as imperial capital."

On King Island, which lies between Tasmania and the Australian mainland, the Dolphin Mine has one of the world's largest deposits of tungsten — a rugged metal used to harden bullets and shells. According to Bloomberg News' David Fickling, the mine (which opened in 1917) is used as an unlikely predictor of major wars — and it's opening again.

"First opened in 1917 to support munitions production in World War 1, it shut down three years later when peace crashed the tungsten market," Fickling explains in a Bloomberg News opinion column. "Starting up again in 1938 on the eve of World War 2, it was saved twice more as conflict broke out first in Korea and then Vietnam. In 1990, exactly 12 months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it closed, seemingly for good. Water flooded its pit and underground tunnels, and the workers' settlement became a ghost town."

Fickling continues, "Viewed from the perspective of 2026, this boom-and-bust cycle looks like a foolish way to have treated such a vital strategic element. With geopolitical tensions on the rise, the retrenchment of supply chains that began with the COVID-19 pandemic has turned into a global scramble to secure critical minerals such as rare earths, lithium and cobalt."

In 2026, Fickling observes, one is seeing an "eruption of speculative interest reminiscent of previous wartime tungsten rushes."

"Since the start of 2025," the Bloomberg News columnist observes, "prices have jumped almost eight-fold, attracting the attention of many players — including the president of the United States. Donald Trump's sons are collaborating with the family of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on a tungsten project in Kazakhstan, according to the New York Times."

Fickling points out that Kevin Pallas, CEO of the Dolphin Mine's parent company, "is betting that global interest in tungsten" will work in the mine's favor.

Pallas told Fickling, "The phone started ringing in January, and it hasn't stopped ringing. The majority of the early calls we got were people saying, 'We thought you were dead.'"

Fickling notes that during wartime, tungsten "has a deadlier purpose" and "can slice straight through armor plating." A "metal rain of tungsten pellets," according to Fickling, "can destroy drones and missile batteries."

"These lethal properties explain why tungsten was once seen as the ultimate military and strategic mineral, as vital to victory as steel or oil," Fickling notes. "During a 1932 League of Nations disarmament conference, prices first collapsed and then soared again as prospects of a deal waxed and waned. Through the decade, as fears of war grew, the belligerents scrambled to secure stockpiles before conflict severed their supply lines. In the run-up to the 1944 D-Day landings, the U.S. imposed an oil embargo on Francoist Spain to force it to stop selling the element to Nazi Germany…. Military strategists have another reason for alarm: the rising tide of conflict is depleting tungsten supplies at the fastest pace in decades."

When Donald Trump narrowly won the 2024 U.S. presidential election, many of the independents who voted for him cited the economy — especially inflation — as a key factor in their decision. Trump, on the campaign trail, promised to lower prices "on Day 1." But one year and a half into his second presidency, inflation is getting worse — not better — according to major economists like Paul Krugman, Robert Reich and the University of Michigan's Justin Wolfers.

Journalist Freddy Gray, writing for the UK-based i Paper, warns that many Americans believe the American Dream is on life support because the United States has become so unaffordable.

"Since COVID-19, inflation has eaten away at the 'American Dream,' and now, even those with good jobs and stable incomes find themselves taking on debt just to cover everyday costs such as putting food on their tables," Gray explains in his i Paper article. "Eating healthily has become financially onerous — the cost of vegetables, for instance, rose 12 per cent last year, tomatoes by 30 per cent in some states. In surveys, Americans report having to scale back on everyday indulgences, such as coffee or snacks, as well as cutting down on online subscriptions, just to afford the cost of more basic living."

Gray continues, "Housing is the greatest burden. Increased mortgage rates and stubbornly high property prices mean that buying a home is, for too many, beyond reach. The rental market is therefore often overcrowded. A typical urban-dwelling U.S. family will spend up to 60 per cent of their income on rent. In pricey San Francisco, the average cost of a two-bed apartment is $5200 (£3,880) a month. Owning and driving a car — that totemic symbol of the American life — is becoming financially difficult, too, especially in metropolitan areas. The costs of insuring, fueling, parking and financing a vehicle have all shot up in recent years. In Florida, partly as a result of extreme weather, car insurance premiums have increased by 75 per cent since 2020 — and in many states, full-coverage for motor vehicles is about twice as expensive as it is in the United Kingdom."

Joel Kotkin, an urban studies specialist at Chapman University in Southern California, argues that the U.S. has become a "neo-feudal" society — which, he warns, "threatens the future of democracy."

Another huge problem for the American Dream, according to Gray, is the high cost of education.

"Traditionally, American families achieved upward social mobility through higher education, or what Americans call college," Gray explains. "Those unable to afford the most elite institutions have long opted for public state universities. Today, however, even a cheaper college costs up to $30,000 (£22,385) per student per year in tuition and board. And it's median earners who find themselves too poor to afford the fees — yet too high-earning to qualify for generous financial aid schemes."

President Donald Trump claimed that his return to the White House would bring about a "golden age of American manufacturing," but as leading economist Steve Rattner pointed out, his actual record falls well short of that claim, and a simple graph proves it.

Rattner is a prominent investor and economic analyst, best known for his time as the lead adviser on former President Barack Obama's auto industry recovery task force. He also currently serves as an analyst for MS NOW and an opinion contributor for the New York Times, providing expert insights into hectic economic moves under the Trump administration.

On Monday, he took to X to share a graph charting the growth in American manufacturing jobs under former President Joe Biden and the same growth under Trump. While these jobs were consistently growing under Biden, Trump's numbers are actually in the negative, as of July, thoroughly deflating his campaign trail boasts.

"Trump claimed his tariffs would bring about a golden age of American manufacturing," Rattner wrote in the post. "Yet since his re-election, we've lost 75,000 manufacturing jobs. Over the same period, Biden had created 625,000."

The much-touted economic growth numbers under Biden were notably boosted, especially early on in his term, by the fact that the country was emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic, with the economy regaining much of what it lost in 2020. Still, as Rattner's graph demonstrated, his number remained in the positive throughout the rest of his term.

Trump argued that his tariff plans would be responsible for returning significant manufacturing operations to the U.S., but so far, they appear to have done considerable damage to the sector instead. In an earlier post from Sunday, Rattner shared another graph showing the federal government's tariff revenue over the course of Trump's second term, which has now dropped into the negative after the tariffs were halted by the Supreme Court, and the damage is only just getting started.

"President Trump used to brag about all the money we were making from tariff revenue," Rattner wrote. "Last month, that trend flipped to a $26 billion loss as the government started paying back the tariffs the Supreme Court ruled illegal. The refund bill is just getting started."

Much of the criticism of President Donald Trump on the right is coming from Never Trump conservatives and libertarians, many of whom were scathing opponents of the MAGA movement from the get-go. Attorney George Conway, The Washington Post's George Will, MS NOW's Joe Scarbrough and The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson were so anti-Trump that they left the Republican Party altogether. But Rich Logis' opposition to Trump is coming from a much different place. In Salon, the founder of Leaving MAGA details his journey from hardcore Trump supporter to Trump opponent — and his ongoing efforts to help others who have become disillusioned with the president and the MAGA movement.

"From 2015 until 2022," Logis explains in Salon, "I was a hardcore MAGA activist and pundit. I spoke at pro-Trump events. I wrote numerous op-eds, and even hosted a podcast dedicated to promoting all things Trump. I loved that he wanted to burn down the established political order. I felt that neither major political party cared for the working person. When Trump ran the first time and was elected against what seemed like impossible odds, it was exhilarating and new. It was also a communal experience. MAGA became my second family."

The Leaving MAGA founder argues that Trump opponents shouldn't dismiss his supporters as a lost cause, but he emphasizes that quitting MAGA is a real struggle for those who have been true believers and are now questioning the movement.

"When I tell people I founded an organization that helps people leave Donald Trump‘s MAGA movement," Logis notes, "the response is often a derisive snort. 'Why waste your time on them?' people sometimes say. 'They're a lost cause. It's a cult.' I firmly believe that kind of dismissive contempt is misguided. In fact, I know it, on a profound personal level…. Recognizing that MAGA provides a strong sense of community is key to understanding its appeal."

Logis continues, "Another integral element of MAGA's power is the pro-Trump media echo chamber. For several years, I got my information almost exclusively from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and Breitbart. Everything outside the echo chamber, to my community, was Democratic Party propaganda…. It's hard to overstate the formidable power of believing the MAGA media's daily lies and distortions. I was addicted to rage and fear. Even though Trump had been elected president, I lived in a perpetual state of despair, desperation and paranoia."

Logis cites anti-vaxxer propaganda during the COVID-19 pandemic and the Robb Elementary School massacre in Uvalde, Texas as two of the things that led to the creation of Leaving MAGA in 2022. And he is seeing others going through the same struggles he went through.

In a speech that President Donald Trump advertised since the beginning of the week, and which was described as a "trap" to trick journalists that even many White House insiders reportedly opposed, the Republican leader ordered the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to pressure states to give him voter information.

"I've also ordered DHS to notify every state about non-citizens on their voter rolls and direct them to revoke all ineligible voters' registrations immediately," Trump said. From there, he pivoted to connecting his Homeland Security order to his signature voter suppression bill.

"But most importantly, election security demands that Congress pass the SAVE Act." Trump said. "How easy is that to do — unless you want to cheat? The only reason you wouldn't do it is you want to cheat, because your policies are so bad and your candidates are so pathetic. that you can't get elected any other way. This landmark bill requires that all voters must show photo voter ID."

In response to Trump's rhetoric about using DHS to intimidate state officials to provide voter rolls, the anti-Trump Republican group known as the The Lincoln Project wrote that "Donald Trump is declaring war on America's election officials."

Meanwhile conservative commentator Sam Stein wrote, regarding Trump's accusation that China tried to turn the election against him, that "one of the documents that Trump has disclosed tonight has a section noting that China targeted the BIDEN campaign and does "not currently intend to covertly interfere to try and sway the outcome of the election."

Dan Vicuña, the Senior Policy Director for Voting and Fair Representation at Common Cause, told AlterNet last month that Trump is trying to delegitimize the 2026 midterm elections after anticipating they will turn against him.

“What they all add up to is a desire to avoid any accountability to the voters in the midterm elections — to ensure, to preordain the outcome of a midterm that he thinks is going to go badly for him,” Vicuña told AlterNet.

Trump's 2020 election conspiracy theories emerged immediately after the November 2020 presidential election, when Donald Trump refused to accept his loss to Joe Biden. Rather than conceding defeat, Trump embarked on an unprecedented campaign to delegitimize the election results, falsely claiming the election was "stolen" through widespread fraud—claims that were rejected by election officials, courts, and his own administration.

Trump's central claim was that mail-in voting, which surged due to COVID-19 pandemic precautions, enabled massive fraud. He alleged that ballots were fabricated, voting machines were rigged, and election officials in Democratic-led cities had conspired to inflate Biden's vote totals. These allegations had no factual basis. Election security officials called the 2020 election "the most secure in American history," and Trump's own Attorney General William Barr found no evidence of widespread fraud.

Despite dozens of lawsuits challenging election results being dismissed by courts—including by judges Trump himself appointed—Trump continued pushing the narrative. He pressured state officials to "find" votes, most notably in a recorded call asking Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to overturn the results. Trump also encouraged supporters to march on Washington on January 6, 2021, which culminated in a violent riot at the Capitol as Congress attempted to certify the election results.

Throughout 2021 and beyond, Trump maintained the "Big Lie," using it to raise hundreds of millions of dollars from supporters and establishing himself as the leader of a movement centered on the false claim that the election was stolen. The conspiracy theories inspired continued protests, lawsuits, and legislative efforts to restrict voting access, leaving a lasting impact on American politics and public trust in elections.

President Donald Trump and his supporters keep insisting that inflation is not as bad as most Americans believe to be the case — and a conservative is warning him that you cannot gaslight people about their own finances.

“Inflation rose to 4.2 percent in May, the highest increase since a 2023 surge under President Joe Biden in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic,” wrote The Bulwark’s Joe Perticone on Thursday. “President Trump, who pledged to ‘quickly defeat inflation’ upon returning to the White House, and who in September lied that the economy had ‘no inflation,’ responded to the news with yet another callously stupid Trumpism.”

Quoting Trump’s Wednesday Oval Office statement that “I love the inflation,” as well as Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) saying “because of Donald Trump, we have more Americans with more money in their pockets because we returned to them—or kept in place—a five trillion dollar tax cut,” Perticone warned that this mindset is a recipe for political disaster.

“You might be able to try to spin inflation rates, as Scott does here, but ultimately, you can’t argue with them—just ask Kamala Harris or Joe Biden,” Perticone explained, referring to the Democratic president and vice president who lost the 2024 election in large part due to economic issues. “Even if voters don’t follow the latest CPI or PPI reports, they notice the climbing prices when opening their wallets.”

Perticone is not alone among right-leaning individuals to warn Trump that inflation is a serious issue. Trump, who in May also said that he does not even think about ordinary Americans’ financial problems, so alarmed the fossil fuel industry that Big Oil has been trying to warn him about the ongoing crisis.

"Oil and gas executives have warned the White House that gasoline prices could surge in the coming months as fuel inventories fall to critical lows, complicating the Trump administration’s efforts to contain inflation that has already rattled American consumers," The Washington Post reported on Thursday.

The report added, "Industry officials say they are doing everything they can to sound an alarm that prices are about to soar as the commercial and government inventories that have mitigated price rises so far are rapidly depleting, according to multiple people familiar with the conversations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from the administration. Some inventories could be wiped out within weeks, the executives have warned, coinciding with the peak summer travel season."

In response to AlterNet’s questions about inflation and the Iran war back in April, White House spokesperson Kush Desai defended Trump.

“President Trump has been clear about short-term disruptions as a result of Operation Epic Fury, and the Administration went into this military engagement with a plan to mitigate these disruptions to America’s long-term economic resurgence," Desai told AlterNet. "As energy markets begin to stabilize, historic tax refund checks hit the mail, and the rest of the Trump administration’s pro-growth agenda continues taking effect, Americans can rest assured that the best is yet to come.”